Change
by MapleFlavouredIce
Summary: "The one thing you need to remember Neku- change." Neku-centric, character death, Joshua/Neku if you squint


Pearly whites snapping in his vision, a flick of manicured nails and a beguiling, painful smirk tossed his way.

"Is this really the answer you wanted?" Those eyes across from him, blurring, drowning in water, they look like lavender, maybe a wisteria colour in tint. Hair slides into the frame quietly, intangibly, leaving him lost for breath as the blood leaves his face and lungs. "I can help you, if you want. Consider it a favour."

Why, he wants to ask, but the words don't come forth and his mind, sluggish and lazy, almost uncaring, too ready to give up. Something's missing, but he can't quite tell what; but maybe he doesn't want to know, so the truth hides at his wish.

It's all hazy and foggy, and since when did the figure before him become like static? Dashed paints of crème and grey and it doesn't make sense- why, why, why is there red creeping into this vision under that blob andwhycan'thebreathanymore why?

/s-/

He's in his bed, lock of orange peel in his eyes and sun entrancing him with all its heat. Everything's so vibrantly orange, and he can't help but hate, he's missing something, can't feel what he needs to but something's quivering in his chest and- it's his heart.

Ba-dump, ba-dump.

A glance at his forearms and he's greeted by innumerable smiles, grins enchanting and whispering things into his ears he can't quite make out – something so deliriously wonderful about voices sliding in and out his head. There's a halt in the flow and he could swear there's a tune in there, slow and saccharine, diving in between his fingers and other limbs.

Words, he can make out words between the sheets around his wrists, so soft and harsh to his eyes. What else is being said yet he cannot hear? Water is his hearing and this feels so familiar, tickle up the spine and cold on his hips. Did-

"Repeat, just like your music…" Silk, silk was the voice framed by so mush silver and floral petals of fire and lavender wisps. "Change, change, change it up-"

Eyes, so many eyes prickling his back, pins diving into the skin and hot knives to his lips, when did he need to drink so badly? The thirst is burning, sticky on his throat and closing the air off in a mess- face stuck behind a pillow and someone's holding him down- when when

/-h-/

Sparkling ocean before his stinging eyes, irises matching the liquid stretched out before him in miles, every direction, every lonely step and quirky hop. Droplets trickle down his shoulders, sun kissed and bruised from sand and waves, body rocked back and forth in simple rhythm.

Tense muscles ease into the cool, skin angry and red against the colourless sky. The 15-year-old swipes pinked tongue across flushed lips, cupping dots of salt and feeling so very thirsty, struck, struck with a sense of remembering.

"But I don't want to go in the water!" Child, to the right, screaming at his mother in a high, nasally, sick voice of childhood, the one that comes from sharing no personal space and used tissues. He doesn't know if the child is endearing or annoying, if those fingers coated in dripped ice cream were nauseating or those cherub cheeks charming. He's up before he's made his mind, grabbing a wipe from his bag and getting to knee level to this kid with not-really-blonde hair. Blobs of navy turn up to him, questioning, admiring, young.

He's wordlessly helping this child out, swiping each drop with the towel in hand, patting the boy on the head when he's done and offering a wordless smile. The mother looks at him like he's the strangest thing she's seen all day, and maybe he is, with burnt skin and matching hair, but he can't help but grab the child's gaze with his own; and there's a smile, there's a smile. Thanks. He can hear it, that's what the kid wants to say, so he keeps looking and is feels a fleeting happiness that something's been _changed_ today.

He's walking; jogging back into the waves by the time he realizes that those eyes weren't really a navy, more like tiny lavenders sprinkled into a colourless ocean. There's something familiar and sad about the colour, but it's brushed off his shoulder as quickly as the sun's light, as he dives and opens his eyes below. It's like covers of silk and the sky's been dropped right before him, hand stretched to touch the tussles of pearls and wispy strands of lace.

He's coming up and out of the water, trails and beads cascading and plopping down below, sheet weighing the teen down. He thinks it's just the waves that keep him from getting his balance and standing up, and after five minutes of trying to reach the pebbly side a foot away, he gives up and turns around to find himself out in the ocean.

Gone out too far, too far and he can't hear that child anymore; but he keeps seeing those eyes in his head, as something tugs. There's lead in his arms and weights tied round his ankles and decides it's about time he turns around and makes it to actual land where he can put his feet down and come back to reality.

Only he can't make it back, the tide's too strong his arms too weak his will not strong enough. He keeps seeing lavender and silver blurring his vision and a voice in his head keeps telling him it's not good enough- why's something not good enough, whywhyishegoingunder- Just breathe, deep, slow, rhythmic.

He's under in less than a minute, and when they find his body there's five finger marks red and angry against his ankle; and it's just him alone in the water out at sea. His mouth's open and eyes blending into the colourless sea, he's got words to say and things to do-

/-o-/

Those three weeks were hell. Surely devised to torture him senseless and mad, yet he's come out… He's still got that mark right above his heart, and he'll thumb it absentmindedly during the day if he's particularly contemplative. He's gotten more than a few stares in the changing room during PE, but he's chalked it up to the fact that he's also got a nice tan and toned up (worked out so that his chances in this world are higher than before, so that if problem arises)… He's always been more of a flight rather than fight person, after all. He's pretty sure he'd be able to book it and get out of the way _now_.

The friends are nice, and he's settled into a routine fairly easily enough. The mp3 player's hardly on, and when it is, he makes a note to turn off the repeat and just listen to the tunes he's gathered over the years, trying to read into the variety. He still sees lavender and silver every time he wakes up, peppermint's on his breathe and round and round his neck, wisps of silver on his pillow and a strand on the notebook he keeps next to the bed. There are doggie ears and rips, crinkled lines and cross outs, white out and erasure marks galore, as the pages tell him what he tries to remember.

He'd had the chance to ask the bearer of lavender eyes why he always leaves bits of his music behind and all he gets his a small smile and a ruffle of his orange peel locks. Whispers of another day another day makes it to his ears and Neku never questions it.

Once he asked why he remembers water and pillows and razors, and all he gets is a look of amusement and words carefully laced with saccharine. It was interesting to listen to that voice, but he has to interrupt.

"What aren't you telling me?" He just gets a look and suddenly, he feels like he's being rocked, and then his lips are dry and his throat quenched and he's at a loss of breathe and skin suddenly clammy, cold and pale. He remembers now, what the words on the pages are trying to tell him.

Lavender eyes, wisteria notes, close before him and silvery locks shake no, no he shouldn't know. His mind's suddenly as blank as it was full and probably looks like one of the goldfish in the floor, mouth open and pupils dilated.

"I've never been one to believe fate." Why, he feels like he's dying all over again, as the words float over him, and his vision is fuzzy as red creeps into the picture. "The one thing you need to remember, Neku-" He's gasping and clawing at his neck now, spitting and trying to breathe as he can feel feathers in his mouth but can't, can't see anything. There's sanguine and ebony pinpricks in the back of his eyes and his head, his _head_.

"Change." The water is rising and he can see lace and pearls and brilliant verdigris waves. So calm and gentile, ice cream covered fingers and not-quite-blonde hair in his mind's eye, the kid he had helped with algebra the other day and the producer who helped make it big and then there's a barrel point at his chest and whoa- déjà vu. Somuchdeath somuchlight

/-t/

Gasp and he's back in bed. The sun's not even over the building's yet, and the sky is a pale tea rose colour, faintly beautiful. He's smiling, from behind his orange peel locks that cover his eyes. And he'll walk out the front door while going to school thirty minutes because he just can't wait to get out. He feels good.

And while walking there, a car will swerve just so- he'll be dead in a hospital bed by the end of the week. And if it's not that it's by the razor in the cabinet, or the pillow on his bed or the ocean's waves or at the end of a gun's barrel.

There's a world out there that he needs to change, after all.

/-shot-/


End file.
